West Bridgewater wants former police officer to release settlement amount

West Bridgewater selectmen have written a letter asking former police Officer Thomas Richmond to release the 2011 settlement that ended his federal court lawsuit against the town. Public records experts say the town did not have authority to make a secret settlement agreement with Richmond or to keep it from the public now.

WEST BRIDGEWATER – The chairman of the board of selectmen says the settlement ought to be made public.

The former police officer who benefited or stands to benefit from the settlement says he has no objection to making it public.

And there is a prior case which ended with the town making public – on order from the state – the financial settlement that ended a lawsuit brought by another former town police office.

Despite those facts, West Bridgewater official continue to balk at telling town residents how much they paid retired police officer Thomas Richmond to drop his federal court lawsuit against the town.

The town’s latest response: Selectmen have written a letter to Richmond’s attorney asking the police officer to release his copy of a 2011 settlement agreement.

The selectmen’s continued resistance to releasing the settlement themselves comes despite a state ruling that cities and towns cannot enter into confidential settlements with present or former public officials, and that any such settlement is a public record that must be available to anyone asking to see it. The Enterprise has filed repeated request for access to the town’s settlement with Richmond.

Jonathan Albano, a Boston attorney specializing in the public records law, said neither party has the authority to make a public record confidential.

“The town’s problem is that Massachusetts law does not allow secret settlement agreements with public employees,” Albano said.

In the letter dated Feb. 5 to attorney Tim Burke of Needham, who is representing Richmond, selectmen asked that Richmond waive the confidentiality clause from the December 2011 agreement he signed with town officials.

When reached this past week, Richmond said town officials made him sign the confidentiality agreement in 2011 – and that he has no problem waiving it now.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Richmond, 50, said. “I’m sure there won’t be a problem. I don’t care who knows (about the settlement amount).”

The letter states that selectmen wished they never agreed to the confidentiality clause.

“The Board wishes it had never agreed to a settlement which included this provision,” the letter states. “Mr. Richmond, in his capacity as a police officer, was a public employee whose compensation was derived by public funds. Therefore, it is right and proper for local residents to be aware of how their tax dollars are being spent.”

Walter Robinson, director of the First Amendment Center at Northeastern University, said agreements involving public employees cannot be private.

“No public agency has a right to keep from the public the provisions of any settlement that involves the use of public funds. Period,” Robinson said. “The private interests of the parties, when they are government employees, do not trump the public interest. The past history of these public sector confidentiality agreements suggests that they are kept from the public so the officials involved won’t be embarrassed by actions that would justifiably anger voters.”

Page 2 of 2 - West Bridgewater’s town administrator, David Gagne, said he wrote the letter to Burke, which was signed by selectmen Chairman Eldon Moreira and selectmen Jerry Lawrence and Nancy Maloney.

Moreira said he has supported making the settlement amount public and that the town has to “start doing things differently.”

“The people have a right to know about anything that involves the town,” Moreira said. “The people are paying the bills here.”

Richmond filed a lawsuit against the town in federal court in Boston in June 2010 claiming discrimination based on disability, retaliation, civil rights violations, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He settled his case with the town for an undisclosed amount in December 2011

Town officials have refused to release the settlement despite The Enterprise filing several written requests for the information. In January, the town asked the state public records division for a ruling that would require the town to release Richmond’s settlement amount.

The town previously withheld the settlement amount from an agreement officials made with former police Lt. Raymund Rogers, 60, who retired in 2008 after several closed-door hearings conducted by selectmen. In keeping that amount secret, the town cited a confidentiality agreement it signed with Rogers. Officials released the information in 2010 after being ordered to do so by the Secretary of State’s Public Records Office, acting on an appeal by The Enterprise.

In its decision, the state ruled such agreements can’t be kept secret because they involved public officials and public funds.

Rogers received a settlement that gave him a $5,000 lump sum – plus he began receiving an annual payment of $2,174.76, which he will get for the rest of his life, in addition to his pension.

Richmond, who was hired as a full-time officer in 2001, retired from the police force on Sept. 4 due to a permanent injury. Richmond earlier filed two complaints in 2009 with Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, claiming discrimination based on disability and retaliation. He later withdrew both complaints and filed the federal lawsuit.

In November, former police officer Joyce Graf won a $125,000 settlement with the town after filing a complaint with the state agency contending she had been a victim of gender and disability. It was the second such case brought by Graf, who won another settlement totaling more than $35,000 in 2012 year based on a 2006 complaint with the commission against discrimination..